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For the city, says Moynihan, the most important benefit from the plan would be a vast expansion of the "working class" and the elimination of what he calls the "lower class." The difference is not merely dollars and cents, but an attitude toward life. "In the lower class," he explains, "they don't take care of property; in the working class, they do. In the lower class, the men don't work; in the working class, they're trying to get overtime. It's the difference between the rioter and the cop."
Hard Up. Pat Moynihan was never likely to become a rioter (though at 6 ft. 5 in. and 195 Ibs., he would make a colorful one), but he knows all too well the effects of both poverty and a broken home. Son of a newspaperman with an Irish love of talk, travel and spirits, Pat was born in Tulsa, Okla. When the boy was eleven, his father walked out of the house for good. Pat never saw him again. Next stop: a cold-water flat in East Harlem, followed by similar apartments on the upper West Side, Hell's Kitchen and other hard-up neighborhoods in Manhattan.
Pat staked out a shoeshine stand on the corner of Broadway and 42nd Street, learned the art of "hustling" newspapers with his brother Mike. Considerably smaller, Mike would carry a stack of papers into a bar. Big, red-faced Pat would appear, throw the papers on the floor and order Mike never to come into "his" territory again. The bully would then hustle off on other business, leaving Mike behind to sell out his stack to sympathetic customers.
Still in high school, Pat became a longshoreman. A high school friend met him in a bar near the docks one day, mentioned that the City College of New York was giving entrance exams. His stevedore's hook in his pocket, Pat sauntered over just to see how he would do. He did well, started college. The Navy's V12 program during World War II sent him later to Middlebury, in Vermont, for a year and then, finally, to Tufts University, outside Boston. Though the war ended before he won his commission, Pat spent a year as a seagoing communications officer on the U.S.S. Quirinus, a transport named for the Roman god of war, returned to a brief but thoroughly educational summer helping his mother and Mike tend bar at Moynihan's on New York's wild West 42nd Street, then won a Fulbright Scholarship and packed off to the London School of Economics.
A Taste for the Best. There, during his off-hours, he attended Labor Party meetings, went to dinners at the home of Howard K. Smith of CBS, and brushed elbows with British political figures. Along the way, he developed a taste for the best cheeses, vintage wines and well-cut clothes. A Savile Row tai lor makes his suits to this day.
In 1953, he entered New York Democratic politics as an aide to Robert Wagner and Averell Harriman. Later, working in the Governor's office as a liaison man in various areas of "the Irish vote," he met another Harriman aide, pretty Elizabeth Brennan. "You," he informed her after one long and noisy party, "are going to marry me." And about two months later, she did. They now have three talented children: Timothy Patrick, 11 (who draws cartoons), Maura Russell, 10 (who writes poetry), John McCloskey, 7 (who designs family Christmas cards), and a wire-haired fox terrier named Whiskey.